


Thaw

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, M/M, Pre-Slash, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surely it's the sweater's fault.</p><p>[Canonsmash!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phindus](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Phindus).



> So… this is actually written for [Phindus](phindus.tumblr.com/)'s headcanon! His 'verse is more Alfons dropping into Brotherhood, whereas the one I came up with is more like Briggs grafted onto the CoS canon. AND BOTH ARE AWESOME, so you should come hang out on our ship. XD
> 
> Anyway, he mentioned Alfons in oversized woolen sweaters, and I was _doomed_. Dude, you know all my weaknesses. I hope so hard that this makes you smile. ♥♥♥
> 
> **Edited to include two pieces of indescribably wonderful art by Phindus which make me wibble with sheer joy**

Miles has to be careful.  If the General had the faintest _hint_ of an idea of the kinds of things he’s contemplating, he’d probably be lucky to keep his epidermis unflayed.

The problem is that Civilian Engineer Heiderich is wearing an oversized sweater.

It’s wool.  It’s a faded light gray with wide navy stripes, above which his eyes look even bluer.  It drapes down his narrow chest, and the collar slides almost off of his right shoulder, and the sleeves are so long that his fingertips just peek out the ends.  With his disheveled hair and his semi-permanent pout, he looks like a disgruntled duckling wrapped up in a giant scarf.

Miles has uncomplainingly shouldered perhaps a bit more than his share of objectionable babysitting jobs over the years, but there has never been one that epitomized temptation quite like this.

  


art by the inimitable Phindus, originally posted [here](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/58457741199/the-disgruntled-duckling-thaw-alfons-being-as)

“What is the agenda for my day?” Alfons asks as they move down one of the innumerable endless halls that wind towards the fuel laboratory.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Miles says.

“Hm,” Alfons says, and his harmless but heartfelt scowl makes Miles’s stomach clench.

He shouldn’t, he _mustn’t_ , but— “Is there anything in particular that you’d like to arrange some time for?”

Alfons looks up at him, startled.  Miles is mesmerized by the way his dark eyelashes bat against his pale skin as he blinks.  In related revelations, Miles is fucking doomed.

“You are not—” Alfons’s forehead scrunches as he struggles with his vocabulary—no amount of commendation will convince him that he’s learning at an incredible pace.  “You are not fooling about with me?”

He couldn’t say _joking_ , could he?  He has to plant the wretched seed in Miles’s dirty mind.

Isn’t that a strange little chain of idioms? Miles is filthy. Miles is soiled.

“I’m not,” he says.  _Nor am I screwing with you, or dicking around, or fucking with you_ , and oh, Lord, if the rumors are true, and General Armstrong can read insubordinate minds, he’ll be dead by morning.

  


additional fantastic art by Phindus, originally posted [here](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/58545124893/more-thaw-fan-art-boom)

Alfons curls his pale hands, uncurls them, and folds his arms across his chest.  “That is very kind of you.”  With a few more echoing steps each, they reach the laboratory door.  Miles pauses; Alfons hesitates.  That’s all power is, isn’t it?  The difference between a pause and a hesitation—a command over the passage of time. “Please, will you take me to the top of the wall, Major?”

That’s not so much to ask.  Maybe he’ll escape with three of his limbs and permanent exile.

He nods, just once, and it’s one time too many.

“At night, if we are allowed,” Alfons says, twisting absently at the hem of one of his dangling sleeves.  _Allowed_ was one of the first words he learned here; what does that tell you?  “I would like to see the stars from here.”

“As you like,” Miles says.  It’s marginally better than _I don’t see a reason why not_ , which would be a bald-faced lie.

Alfons smiles—only faintly; there’s barely even a curve to his lips, and it doesn’t light his eyes, but it’s the closest to contented that Miles has seen him since he arrived.

And it’s _intoxicating_.  The otherworldliness still clings to Alfons Heiderich, drifting out from him like a perfume; he’s all sharp, delicate lines softened by pale colors, like a porcelain doll, but Miles has long since observed how far this boy is from fragility.  He dropped into an unknown, unimaginable universe, and he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started walking.  He met an ice-blue-eyed interrogation from Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong with calm, righteous resolve.  He has carved out a space for himself here, by force, with blunt tools, and settled in despite all expectations to the contrary.

And, perhaps most striking to a soldier, he has looked into the scarred face of Death and shrugged one slender shoulder.

Miles holds the laboratory door open for his charge and lets the magic begin. At the workbench, Alfons is engrossed and efficient—Miles is no scientist, but the engineers’ reports on Alfons’s results offer such uniformly glowing reviews that it’s almost suspicious.  Alfons thrives in the laboratory, twirling a pencil over the knuckle of his first finger, smoothing his palm slowly over a blueprint, with mathematical formulas Miles can’t even fathom pouring from his graceful hand.  He’s an extraordinarily adaptable fish in unfamiliar water.  To be terribly honest, he’s just _extraordinary_.

Really, that’s the part that signs off on Miles’s first-class window-seat ticket directly to hell.

He leafs through the latest round of transfer applications while he waits. It always seems bizarre to him how many people _want_ to come to Briggs—or at least earnestly believe that they do. These pages are the profiles of young adventurers who still subscribe to fame and glory, not worn-down souls who have learned by trial and error that these endless wastes of snow and steel and mountain are the only place big enough to contain their contradictions.

An application isn’t how you end up in the North. You start out following the path towards somewhere else entirely, but the blizzard overtakes you, and when the deafening whiteness clears, you’re home.

Miles likes to think that maybe Alfons will stay, if there’s a fireplace and an armchair and an engineering quandary waiting.

He’s supposed to have Civilian Engineer Heiderich clocked out, fed, and returned to his quarters by twenty-hundred hours. The odds are favorable that no one will even notice them stepping into the elevator at ten minutes past, but in the event that the sordid truth emerges, Miles has resigned himself to his fate. The gleam in Alfons’s eye is entirely new and entirely _beautiful_ , and Miles put it there.

The elevator is not Miles’s favorite part of the fort for reasons including but not limited to: dubious structural integrity, a ride encompassing nauseatingly varied momentums, and persistent thoughts to the effect of _Oh God we’re going to die_. When the doors rattle apart, however, and Alfons steps out and curls his gloved hands and lifts his white face to the blue-black sky, Miles thinks that it’s worth having had his heart lodged in his throat for the whole ascent.

The only problem is that his heart doesn’t seem to be retreating.

“He always told me that they were different here,” Alfons says, gazing upward, breath a soft pale mist.

“Who?” Miles asks, although of course he knows.

“Edward,” Alfons says. “Or at least… the Edward that I knew.”

 _The one that loved me_ , he doesn’t say, but Miles knows that, too.

“I should have believed it,” Alfons says softly.  The beaming floodlight by the elevator is aimed low to the ground, but it glances off of the lines of Alfons’s throat as he swallows.  “But Ed said a lot of things.  A lot of mad things.”

Miles pushes his hands into his pockets, tightens them into fists, and does not ask for more.

“Thank you, Major,” Alfons says after a moment, with another shadowed hint of a smile.  “I know this is not… this is perhaps not fitting with protocol.  But it is… this is the first time since I arrived here that I feel as though I am breathing.”

Looking directly at him is too dangerous; Miles considers the spray of tiny lights across the sky.  “How do they compare with the ones you had before?”

Alfons wraps his arms around himself and digs his fingers into his sweater.  “I… am not s-sure.”

“If you’re going to stay here,” Miles says—slowly, carefully, but there’s simply not enough caution in the world for this, “you’re going to need a coat.”

Alfons looks at the feathery fur lining around Miles’s neck, and the _longing_ in that gaze makes Miles’s stomach drop so fast that the elevator ought to be embarrassed.  “P-perhaps.”

Miles pauses for just another misty breath, but Alfons is huddling progressively smaller; any moment now the sweater will overtake him altogether.  Miles reaches out to the lever and summons the elevator again.  “We should be getting you back to the barracks.”

“It is t-true,” Alfons murmurs, stepping gingerly past Miles as the doors part and yawn open wide.  “It was s-sincere, Major—what I s-s-said.  Th-thank you.”

Miles can’t exactly say _You’re welcome_ ; he tries for a gracious nod.

The doors shudder closed.  The weak fluorescent lights flicker just a bit.  The pulleys grind, and the motor groans, and they begin their descent.

Alfons stands there, hugging his elbows, and shivers.  And Miles… breaks.

He has stared down Drachman machine-gun barrels; he has brushed off state-sanctioned murderers and back-alley throat-slashers and some men who were both.  He has felt the frostbite beginning to claim the tips of his toes; he’s dug out a bunker for the night in a snowdrift that could bury one of their tanks.  He’s weathered the storms, and the wars, and the caprices of cowards and creatures with power over better men.

So it seems strange, really. It’s strange that it’s a pale young man in a woolen sweater who has destroyed him.

He does the irrevocable and slips an arm around Alfons’s trembling shoulders. There’s a moment so fraught that he thinks they’re both forsaken.

Then the boy does the unthinkable and nestles in close.

Miles, of all people, should have known that defrosting from the inside, too, would tingle and then sting.


End file.
